Browsing: Work at heights | Page 11

• Industry Standard for deadly EWPs amended in Vic; and
  
• Silica breaches attract penalty as new Code commences.

• "Priority" industries examined in latest at-work fatality report; and
  
• Regulator lays charges over one death, investigates another.

A safety regulator has successfully prosecuted a government-owned corporation for supplying a worker with a metal (instead of nonconductive) rod to clean powerlines, and is investigating a separate fatal electrical incident. Another regulator has issued a workplace powerlines warning after multiple shocks and near misses.

• Fatality rate falls as serious injury rate and costs increase; and
  
• Upstream duty holder fined over unsafe installation.

A company that ignored its own safety systems for guarding penetrations has been handed a $600,000 pre-discount fine, after one of its managers died in a 19-metre fall through an unguarded ventilation shaft.

Just two weeks after expressing her concern and dismay at the number of fall-from-height cases coming before her court, a judge has handed down another $800,000 pre-discount fine in a case where "glaringly" obvious risks were ignored.

A judge has lamented that the height safety message from numerous WHS prosecutions is not getting through to duty holders, in handing a PCBU a pre-discount fine of $825,000 over an incident in which workers were directed to ride in an excavator bucket, before falling four metres.

One of two company directors charged with failing to exercise due diligence, in relation to a fatal helicopter crash possibly linked to the pilot's alcohol consumption, has entered a WHS undertaking in lieu of prosecution.

The popularity of virtual reality training for workers is on the rise, with a US study finding many industry leaders are open to using the relatively cheap technology that both increases employee engagement and allows workers to experience high-risk scenarios in a safe environment.

A judge has highlighted the concurrent WHS duties of PCBUs in fining a company for multiple contraventions, after a 700-kilogram load fell from a tower crane onto a poorly barricaded footpath and struck a worker, causing serious lifelong injuries.